Company Updates

Working in a startup can be difficult. As a designer or developer you'll find you end up in more meetings than you'd like. Here are 8 things you can do to take back your time, and make your meetings far more effective. http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vIGSr

With Help From Google & Apple Business meetings can be the death of productivity. Yes, I said it. If you've got a meeting and there's no structure to it, run and hide. We've all been there. You're summoned to a meeting by a colleague, or put on a repeating meeting schedule where the idea is to "check-in" or "brainstorm".

Over the last decade, few aspects of software have gathered more attention and appreciation than "usability". As releases have given way to iterations and functional has merged with "sexy", most members of the tech community now?-?finally?-?recognize that within the holistic context of a software product UX can play a "make or break" role.

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"By their very nature flat companies are at the mercy of the self-organized, self-motivated contributors. They're opportunities for you to make an impact" - Cahill on corporate culture: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vIGDU

"You know what the problem with this place is....?" Company culture. It's one of the invisible hands that internally guides every company towards success or failure. And while it's desperately important to the life of every company, it's hard to manage and near impossible to pinpoint one single influence.

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Every once in a while, even the best of us designers, developers and creatives need a good design refresher. Here are 3. It's a 4-min read. http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vIGeS

We live in an intensely visual-design driven world. And yet many budding designers, sizzling start-ups and even established companies still disappoint their users with their criminal approach to basic design principles. The truth is that your website, your app, and your documents are read by people who don't have time to navigate their way through dishevelled mazes of poor design.

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"Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done" - Agile development. Here's how formality is changing the game: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vIGiT

Almost 15 years ago a bunch of like-minded folks sat down together in Utah and began discussing software defects. Not defects in the actual software people were developing, but defects in the processes and paradigms being applied to facilitate the development process. The result of those discussions was the release of a document called: The Agile Manifesto.

What is good programming style? It is more than consistent indentation. More than good naming practices and choosing a super hot new framework. More than the DRY principle and separation of concerns. More than keeping things "object oriented" and modular, reactive and functional. There are higher-level goals that drive our choice of approaches to coding.

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Attention designers, UX & UI enthusiasts. Our own Cahill P just published a 6-min read on how: Standardization is Crushing UX, and what to do about it :http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vIGAh

"Let's not reinvent the wheel." If you've ever worked at a software company you've heard somebody say this during a design session. As liberated and brash as we may seem these days, we are?-?more than ever?-?fighting a creative culture of fear.

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How the age of digitization has cut our focus in 1/2 - and what to do about it: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vI1hy

At the turn of the millennium the average attention span of a functioning adult was a whopping 12 seconds. A scant 13 years later, Microsoft?-?interested in exploring how the explosion of digital life and connectivity impacts us?-?found that our attention span had plummeted and hovered somewhere around 8 seconds.

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Beyond writing code - what does a developer actually do? Here's one of our lead developers perspective: http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vI1mO

Everyone knows what programming is: staring at code while sipping something caffeinated and occasionally cursing at the screen, right? Jokes aside, there are great articles like Paul Ford's "What is Code" already out there that provide an explanation of the functional basics and politics of coding, and give good visibility into the human side of this craft.

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We just published: Mind Full or Mindful - How Mindful Listening Improves Productivity in Tech http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vI11U

Mindful what now? Mindfulness is a word that has been heavily featured in popular media of late, most notably for its ability to help manage the downfalls of stress. And it's no wonder mindfulness is popular: the busyness and stress of day-to-day life appears to be taking quite a toll on us.